That line about the light bending around the object is what gets me. Real film does weird stuff with glare that digital sensors just don't copy. My grandpa had a Super 8 reel from a 1965 airshow and the lens flare wobbles frame to frame in a way that looks almost fake until you realize a computer can't mess up that naturally. Clean 4K clips are actually easier to fake now because everything is too perfect. Grain and gate jitter are hard to copy by hand.

Paying for AI pics isn't automatically a scam, you just picked a bad tool. The tech works fine when it's built right, and a lot of small shops use it now because a real photographer costs way more than $200. Three fingers and warped collars mean that site was running cheap junk and hoping nobody would notice. Free tiers can beat paid ones, sure, but that doesn't mean the whole idea is broken. It means do a test run with a few selfies before handing over your card.